Posts Tagged ‘rules’

There has been some confusion regarding the interpretation of the “Influence” action. I will try to clarify this below.

Apparently there has been a small change in the rules. In the first edition of the rulebook it says:

By selecting the Influence action, you may move up to two Influence Discs. These moves may be:

• from your Influence Track or from a hex where you have an Influence Disc to a hex that does not contain an Influence

Disc or an enemy Ship and is adjacent to a hex where you have a disc or a Ship.

• From a hex where you have an Influence Disc back to your Influence Track.

Hence, following these rules you are not allowed to place an influence disc on a hex you occupy with a ship if it is not adjacent to a hex with one of your influence discs/ships. However, in the 2nd edition of the rulebook it says:

By selecting the Influence action, you may move up to two Influence Discs. These moves may be:

• from your Influence Track, or from a hex where you have an Influence Disc to a hex that does not contain an Influence Disc or an enemy Ship and is adjacent to a hex where you have a discor a Ship, or to a hex where only you have a Ship, or back to your Influence Track.

So following the most up-to-date rule a player may influence a hex he/she has a ship on even though it is not adjacent to any other hex he/she occupies (with either a ship or influence disc).

The rules also state that: The hex Influenced has to have a Wormhole connection to the hex where you have a disc or a Ship.

This could be misinterpreted to overrule the conclusion above. However, the sentence “the hex where you have a disc or a ship” is referring back to the same hex mentioned at the beginning of the sentence, not a new hex. Thus, the rule is still valid.

So in theory you could fly past enemy territory (possibly leaving some ships pinned), stop on an “abandoned” hex, influence it and at the same time influence an adjacent hex that is connected to it with a wormhole.

One last note, remember that you can also place an influence disc after combat even though there are no friendly adjacent hexes (provided that you have destroyed all enemy ships and populations). This influence disc must come from the influence track as opposed to the “influence” action where you can retrieve it from another hex.

I have never been a big fan of card games. My expectations for Dominion were therefore quite low, also considering all the great reviews this game had received.

Dominion was supposed to be a warm-up game. A quick 30 minutes before continuing to the highlight of the evening: Shogun. Three hours later we were still at it with heaps of Supply cards left. Either something was wrong or we were extremely slow learners. After reading the rulebook it was clear that we had made three rookie mistakes: 1) We had used all 25 Kingdom cards, 2) all the Supply cards (4p game), 3) and hadn’t figured out that the Copper cards were free. Now the three hours made sense.

Despite the misinterpretation of the rules we could all agree on one thing: this was a great game, possibly replacing Shogun as our new favourite (ratings will be given in the near future).

Like any first gaming session strategic play was more or less absent and replaced by random tactics. Actually I would say we played pretty poorly. All of us, some more than others, were competing in obtaining as many action cards as possible (or so it seemed) meanwhile neglecting to collect Treasure and Victory cards. In retrospect this was really stupid (but fun) since the amount of Victory cards will determine the winner. One of us, Svendsen, played pretty decent and won the game even though I suspect he has spent his previous evenings reading up on strategy moves on the internet (something I always refrain from doing since it is unfair to the other players).

The take-home message from this first session is obviously: read the rulebook thoroughly before playing!